science reporting
clock | October 5, 2006Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, will chat onliine on DefCon blog at 7pm EST tonight. You can post a question right now, if you register.
clock | October 5, 2006Have you seen Flock of Dodos yet? Don't you want to? Why not do something socially positive in the process - ask your local library to get a copy - it is only $345! Then ask them to host a public screening. Then get a bunch of friends and watch it. Get more information from Reed (especially for Triangle bloggers) and PZ Myers.
clock | October 3, 2006
Just to make sure everyone knows where it is going to be, and while still early in the game, we decided to change the name of the conference into 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. So, go to the main page to download new logos and flyers. The t-shirt is also in the making...
clock | October 2, 2006
A science (and medicine) blogging conference, the first of its kind, is now officially announced for January 20th 2007. What can you do?
1. First, go to the conference wiki and look around to see what it is all about.
2. Help to spread the word by blogging about it. If you do, you can use these cool logos as well as this Technorati tag.
3. Download this flyer (pdf), print a couple of copies and post them outside your office/lab door or down the hall on a bulletin board, or wherever else you think it is appropriate.
4. Use the word of mouth or e-mail to tell your friends about it. Tell…
clock | October 2, 2006Radio In Vivo is close enough to me that I can listen to it at home (but not when I am driving places around town ro to Raleigh):
Radio In Vivo: Your Link to the Triangle Science Community is a one-hour interview/call-in program, focusing on one scientific topic per week. Typically, but not exclusively, scientific activities and personalities local to the Research Triangle area of North Carolina are featured.
Ernie Hood, a freelance science writer based in Hillsborough, North Carolina, produces and hosts Radio In Vivo. Please click the "About Ernie" link to your left to learn more about Ernie…
clock | September 22, 2006
The 2007 Triangle Science Blogging Conference will be a day-long conference Saturday, January 20, 2007 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. This is a free, open and public event for bloggers, scientists, science educators and anyone interested in discussing science on the Internet.
The conference is organized by Anton Zuiker, Brian Russell, Paul Jones and myself (you may remember I have been pushing for something like this for a while now).
You can get all the information on the conference wiki, where you can also register for free.
For all the news and developments, check out the Blogtogether blog.…
clock | September 19, 2006Jennifer Ouliette offers sage advice.
You don't need a science degree.
But nobody said you cannot have a PhD to do it.
clock | September 16, 2006The phrase "Living Fossil" is second to only "Missing Link" on my list of irks-me-to-no-end abuses of English language. Darren Naish now explains exactly what is wrong with the term, using as the case study the recent rediscovery of the Sumatran rhino. This is your Most Obligatory reading of the day!
clock | September 10, 2006This kind of ignorant bleating makes me froth at the mouth every time - I guess it is because this is my own blogging "turf".
One of the recurring themes of my blog is the disdain I have for people who equate sleep with laziness out of their Puritan core of understanding of the world, their "work ethic" which is a smokescreen for power-play, their vicious disrespect for everyone who is not like them, and the nasty feeling of superiority they have towards the teenagers just because they are older, bigger, stronger and more powerful than the kids. Not to forget the idiotic notions that kids…
clock | September 8, 2006You may remember this chart from three days ago. Now, Rob Loftis updated his chart after the inputs of a number of bloggers and commenters over the past few days, and John Dupuis has his own chart he uses in teaching about the flow of scientific information.
clock | September 6, 2006As a scientist and a blogger and someone very interested in science communication, I was quite delighted with Rob HelpyChalk's series of three charts depicting traditional communication between scientists, traditional communication between scientists and general population, and the new two-way communication between scientists and general population (here is the third chart):
Bill and PZ have some comments on the chart as well. Leave your comments on Rob's blog.
clock | August 29, 2006From quite early on in my blogging endeavor, I was interested in exploring science blogging, what it is, what it can do, and what it can become. So, check out some of my earliest thoughts on this here and here.
Then, over about a month (from April 17, 2006 to May 17, 2006) I wrote a gazillion posts on this topic, and many science bloggers chimed in in the comments or on their own blogs. The repost of all of them together is under the fold. Check the originals (and comments) here:
April 17, 2006: Publishing hypotheses and data on a blog - is it going to happen on science blogs?
April 20,…
clock | August 28, 2006Where does one start with debunking fallacies in this little article? Oy vey!
Dolphins and whales are dumber than goldfish and don't have the know-how to match a rat, new research from South Africa shows. For years, humans have assumed the large brains of dolphins meant the mammals were highly intelligent.
No, we knew dolphins were smart millenia before we ever looked at their brains. The ancient Chinese knew it. Aristotle knew it. And the idea that brain size has anything to do with intelligence is, like, sooo 19th century.
Paul Manger from Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand,…
clock | August 26, 2006As we age, our sleep gets less well consolidated: we take more naps during the day and wake up more oftenduring the night. This happens to other mammals as their age. Now we know that it also happens in Drosophila:
"As humans age, so I'm told, they tend not to sleep as well. There are all sorts of reasons -- aches and pains, worries about work and lifelong accumulations of sins that pretty much rule out the sweet sleep of innocence.
But what about fruit flies? Not as a cause of insomnia. What about the problems fruit flies have sleeping?
Yes, Drosophila melanogaster also suffer sleep…
clock | August 24, 2006Now you know where I was last night instead of blogging. Local North Carolina wine and local North Carolina cheeses and local handpicked blueberries and local grass-grown beef and local organic potatoes, tomatoes and squash....and discussing "Omnivore's Dilemma" with the locally grown, organic and sustainable (grass-fed?) science writers of North Carolina.
clock | August 16, 2006Have you heard about the stupid German study that uses evo-psych Just-So-Stories about, supposedly, women losing interest in sex shortly after marriage?
I wanted to dissect it when it first came out but Real Life and time-constraints prevented me. In the meantime, Dr.Petra, Shakespeare's Sister, Amanda and Echidne ably debunked and destroyed the study and the media reporting on it, so I don't have to do anything but link to them.
clock | August 7, 2006Sexual Lyrics Prompt Teens to Have Sex:
Teens whose iPods are full of music with raunchy, sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs, a study found.
Whether it's hip-hop, rap, pop or rock, much of popular music aimed at teens contains sexual overtones. Its influence on their behavior appears to depend on how the sex is portrayed, researchers found.
The article does point out skepticism by a couple of other researchers, but the title and the lede suggest that they'd prefer the readers to ignore the skepticism.
clock | July 27, 2006In an interview in Time magazine, Morgan Spurlock said, among else (and you should go and read the "else"):
We've started to make science and empirical evidence not nearly as important as punditry--people wusing p.r.-speak to push a corporate or political agenda. I think we need to turn scientists back into the rock stars they are.
Chris brought this quote to the bloggers' attention and Shelley was the first to respond:
I find this quote so refreshing (not just because it places us scientists up on a lofty pedestal), because it validates scientific authority figures as someone worth listening…